Her nighttime dreams of Jake had made her believe she was being punished for running away without a word and not telling him she was all right. She was safe, at least as safe as she could be, with this wolf business that plagued her now… and Mario’s men tailing her from time to time. At least that’s who she thought had been following her. Although having found “bugs” on her car four times in the early days while she tried to track down Mario, she thought maybe someone else was on her trail.
But Mario had said Jake would be dead if he continued to tag along with her, and she knew that hadn’t been idle bullying. Mario’s kind didn’t make pointless threats. Hopefully, he was behind bars again. She’d had the notion that she might get in touch with Jake after Mario and Danny were again incarcerated, but that didn’t matter now. Not with what she’d become.
She clutched her teacup tighter, then released it and sighed. With nerves steeled, she paid for her tea, left the restaurant, and headed across the street to the gallery before the shop closed for the evening. Chimes rang when she opened the door and stepped inside.
A woman in a flouncy floral skirt and pink shell was talking to a man wearing a ponytail and dressed in black as if he was a goth. The man’s chin rested on his fist while he nodded and stared at a blob of orange splashed against a sea of purple. Alicia raised her brows. If only she could get thousands of dollars for “artwork” like that while staying hidden at home. She hadn’t attempted any more bounty hunting, what with the unpredictability of her new condition. She wasn’t sure how she was going to earn a living in the future.
Another woman dressed in a business suit was speaking to a small group of what looked to be college students and a slightly older woman who might have been their art teacher.
A suited man was busy talking to a woman who seemed more intrigued by him than the painting they were standing in front of.
Alicia frowned. She needed to question the staff pronto and return to her hotel room, then leave the area forever. That made her sad as she thought about how she wouldn’t be able to visit her mother where she’d died any longer, although she’d made one last trip there before she’d stopped at the restaurant.
The art gallery staff continued to court those they had been speaking to when she’d arrived. Not being able to question them about Jake, she searched for the paintings he had done. A group of paintings of naked women caught her eye, and she smiled a little, thinking of her conversation with him about painting his old girlfriends in the nude and the sexy smile he’d given in return. But the name signed at the bottom wasn’t Jake Silver.
She checked on landscapes next, mostly featuring the Rockies, but none of them had his signature either. Lots more blob pictures were featured all over the place, not his unless he was too embarrassed to sign what he painted and used a different name to disguise his own.
But then she came across a display of photographs. And became engrossed in them. Wildflowers of Colorado. Wild, exotic, in colors so vivid that they looked unreal. The details so defined that she felt she could reach out and touch them and feel the soft velvety petals. Deep orange paintbrush and red fairy-trumpet flowers, cinnabar-red alpine wallflowers and rosy pussytoes, fuchsia fairy slipper orchids, bright pink primrose, and spotted wood lilies in a tangerine color.
Her mother had taught Alicia the beauty of wildflowers in their natural habitats when she was younger. Her mother had loved to hike and observe the great blue sky, wisps of clouds, majestic mountains, and towering trees. Even though her mother had been an extrovert and fed off the hustle and bustle of being around tons of people as she waitressed in a busy cafeteria, she still liked to soak in the beauty of nature, and Alicia had shared her mother’s love of the wilderness.
Alicia tried to rein in her sadness when she thought of her mother dying alone in that wilderness with no one to protect her. She took a deep shuddering breath, reminding herself why she’d become a bounty hunter, which had ultimately led her to the unfortunate condition she was in now. Who would have ever thought?
But for the moment, seeing the photographs brought back the happier memories of Alicia and her mother on nature walks, and tears formed in her eyes.
“May I help you?” the woman in the flowery skirt asked. Ponytail man had left, apparently without buying the orange blob as it was still hanging on the wall.
“Yes, I wonder if you could tell me about Jake Silver. He was leaving something off at the art gallery a few weeks back. I need to get in touch with him. It’s important.”
“J.S.” The woman smiled brightly. “Oh yes, he’s…” She sighed and didn’t have to say what was on her mind. The guy was a virile, hunky stud. The woman motioned to the photos. “The photographs you’re admiring are his.”
“J.S.?” Alicia looked down at the extremely small print. Modest, or embarrassed to proclaim they were his? They were beautiful.
“Yes. That’s his autograph. We just started carrying his work. I hope we sell a lot and he makes more trips up here.”
“Up here?”
“Yes, he’s not from around here. I don’t recall where he’s from exactly, but it’s not Breckenridge. He did come in a few times in the past several weeks, looking for a dark-haired woman, who—” The woman’s eyes widened. “Who looked like you, from his description. Are you Alicia Greiston?”
“Yes, I am.” Hope stirred anew that Jake had left contact information for her, yet the knowledge he was looking for her saddened her, too. He had to have been angry with her for running out on him the way she had. She wanted so badly to see him, but…
She swallowed hard. How could she see him, knowing what she’d now become?
The woman’s mouth pursed a little. “Oh. Well, he left something for you.” The woman didn’t look pleased and stalked off to a desk near the entrance.
So it wasn’t Alicia’s imagination that the woman was interested in Jake. Feeling bone-deep sadness that she couldn’t see Jake further and that she had to cut any ties with him, Alicia watched as the woman pulled an envelope out of a desk drawer, then returned. But a streak of jealousy raced through Alicia’s veins, too, as she considered how the woman would most likely ply her feminine wiles on Jake every time he chanced to visit the gallery when Alicia wished she could be with him instead.
Alicia’s hand trembled as she took the envelope, dying to see what he had said to her. Afraid also.
She tucked it into her purse and said, “Thank you.”
She glanced back at the photographs. Although she knew she shouldn’t buy one, that taking one with her would remind her of the time they had spent together and what she had lost, she reasoned that her mother would have loved having one of them. With that thought firmly in mind, Alicia decided on the tangerine spotted wood lilies. Although she wanted the fuchsia fairy slipper orchids, the picture was too big and cost too much. “I’ll take that one.”
Alicia handed her a credit card, and the woman feigned a polite smile. “I’ll just wrap this up for you.”
As soon as the woman had taken the photo down and walked off, Alicia pulled the envelope out of her purse and ripped it open. In bold strokes, Jake had written: Call me! And left his phone number where she could reach him.
Her stomach tightened. She sensed from his note that he was angry and frustrated with her for having taken off without a word. And she didn’t blame him. He seemed the kind of man who wouldn’t have given in to threats by Constantino or his men. If Jake had known why she had left him, he would have been furious, wanting to deal with them in his own way. But he didn’t know what the men were capable of. And his wonderfully macho nature wouldn’t have kept him from being murdered. On the contrary, his protectiveness for her would have gotten him killed faster.
She pulled out her phone and opened it. The battery was dead. She’d have to call Jake when she got to her hotel room.
Then she noticed the suited man moving his hands down the arms of the woman he’d been talking to in a solicitous manner while she adoringly looked up at him. He glanced back at the other two employees, saw they were occupied, and then with a smile, he motioned to a little room, led the woman inside, and shut the door.
At the same instant, Alicia felt sudden heat penetrate every inch of her body. The heat. Oh God, no.
The urge to shift hit her fast and furious. Heat shimmered through every cell, through every tissue. She glanced around the gallery, looking for a way out of this nightmare.
The woman with Alicia’s photo had disappeared into a back room. She had Alicia’s credit card, and Alicia had to have it to survive. The other saleswoman was walking outside with the art students and their teacher, blocking the doorway.
Looking for the restroom, Alicia spied a sign directing her down a hall and rushed to make her way there before she had an “accident.”
As soon as she entered the ladies’ restroom and found no one in there, she hurried into the handicapped stall. Normally, she avoided using the handicapped stall if another stall was available, leaving it to women who truly needed it, but tonight she was as handicapped as anyone.
Slipping out of the short-sleeved dress she wore, she hung it on the hook on the door, then kicked off her pumps. Barely free of her bra and panties, she shifted, the heat fusing every inch of her body until her bones felt as if they were liquefying and remolding, but in a flash. The next thing she knew, she was dropping down on all four feet—furry, long legged, with long a bushy tail—a small gray wolf.
Once again she cursed Ferdinand Massaro for having bitten her and leaving her to face this dilemma on her own. Although she wouldn’t have wanted to see what he’d had in mind to do with her if he’d lived. And she would have been in a lot more danger if she’d remained with him because of his connections.
As if she wasn’t in danger now.
Pacing, she stalked back and forth in the stall—still too small for a highly agitated wolf. It was nearly closing time. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been in the restroom, trying to will herself back into her human form, when someone knocked on the restroom door and opened it.